Weathered staff, muddy boots, broken time-piece, rugged coat, fiddle, pencil stub, yellowed pages, old photograph, parched wine-skin, coffee beans & dry flowers...scribblings of a wandering gypsy.
Yes, this is the place where I scribble all my thoughts in the form of poetry.

Tuesday, December 15, 2009

A whole generation grew up in the 60s, 70s and 80s, dreaming of owning it. Bajaj scooters, one of the aspirations of the Indian middle class for decades, will soon be a part of history.

After selling scooters for over 50 years, Bajaj Auto, the company which developed a scooter market with its popular Hamara Bajaj campaign invoking trust and reliability, announced sometime back that it is phasing out scooter production, keeping the focus on motorcycles.

This piece of news took me back to an era that seems so distant now. The good ol' days of Doordarshan and Vividh Bharati. The days when the only thing you saw on the roads were cycles, Luna, Bajaj scooter (Hamara Bajaj) Vespa scooters and TVS/ Avanti/ Suvega mopeds and cars like Maruti 800, Premier Padmini, Fiat, Contessa and Ambassador were owned by 'lakhpatis'. The same ol' days of frequent power-cuts and hence candlelight family dinners and then going up on the terrace and spending quality time together. When summer vacations were spent visiting your grandparents, watching rented movies on VCR, reading Enid Blyton/Tinkle/Champak and sending postcards to your cousins. Nostalgia :)

This one is another old poem and the difference in the writing style is painfully obvious with the efforts at rhyming. But I'm extremely attached to this poem because whenever I read this poem, I get fleeting images of my childhood. I'm sure anyone who has spent some part of his childhood in the late eighties or early nineties in India would be able to relate to this.

About Coffee Beans and Dry Flowers...

Coffee Beans and dry flowers,A spent candle and ashes in the fireplace; Coffee lying stale in a chipped mug,And a table cloth that was once white,Edged with frayed lace.A window pane that is cracked,Climbers lying uncared for on the sill,A raging storm beyond it,But here my world stands still.

A bulb in the corner, at times flickering,And a radio sometimes crackles...But registers nothing.

But somewhere amidst all of this, I wait...While penningmy thoughts on yellowed pages,Random scribblings of a wandering gypsy perhaps,Waiting for my vagrant soul to find a home,Waiting for my hand to be held and grasped.

Yes, this is the place where I scribble all my thoughts in the form of poetry.

About Me

Have you ever stopped to stare at roadside flowers? Run around on dewy grass on early spring mornings? Enjoyed the musty smell of frayed pages of old books? Smiled back at strangers? Ever felt like walking back home in the rain? Stopped whatever you were doing to listen to your favourite song on the radio? Ever strained your ears to hear silence? Become teary eyed during mushy scenes in movies? Ever called up long lost friends for no apparent reason? Wanted to believe in something that cannot be explained? Ever loved? Been loved? ever lain spread eagled on the terrace, counting the wishes amidst the phosphorescent sea of a million stars overhead, wondering whether yours was somewhere among those waves too?
See, I told you…you know me…